April 19, 2011

An estimated 10,000 activists from around the country converged on Washington, D.C., from April 15-18 for the third biannual Power Shift, a 3-day climate summit featuring seminars, job fairs, films, speeches, panel discussions, and workshops in community organizing and movement-building.The aim is to train and recruit new front-line troops in the clean energy and climate movement.

[Click on any image in this post to watch a 45-second video of Power Shift 2011.]

Photo by Heather Moyer

Power Shift 2011, billed as the largest grassroots training event in the nation's history, culminated on April 18 with a gathering in front of the White House, marches to the Department of the Interior, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and British Petroleum's Washington headquarters, and a Lobby Day on Capitol Hill calling on lawmakers to reject campaign contributions from corporate polluters.

Photo by Kim Teplitzky

To make sure their message reverberated locally as well as nationally, demonstrators rallied on the steps of GenOn Energy's lobbying headquarters in Washington to demand the retirement of the Potomac River Coal Plant in nearby Alexandria, Virginia. "GenOn is literally making us sick," said Chelsea Roseberry, a student at George Mason University and a Sierra Club volunteer. "I'm here to expose the truth about Big Coal."

Photo by Phillip Ellis

A Clean Air Task Force report has found that pollution from the GenOn plant is responsible for 37 deaths, 60 heart attacks, 610 asthma attacks, and over $287 million in total healthcare costs annually in the Washington, D.C. area. Nationally, GenOn is responsible for more than 12,000 asthma attacks, 815 deaths, and $5.6 billion in healthcare costs each year.

Photo by Jim Dougherty

Former Sierra Student Coalition (SSC) Beyond Coal Campaign president Kara Dodson spoke at the rally. "I am fed up with the nearly $200 million Big Coal companies like GenOn spent last year to lobby our government," she said. "GenOn alone spent over a million dollars so they can continue to pollute our air and water." Activists also staged an evening vigil at GenOn's Potomac River plant. Fox5 News aired this segment on the vigil.

Photo by Jim Dougherty

Below, former and current Sierra Club presidents Allison Chin at Robin Mann represent for the Club.

Photo by Heather Moyer

"We don't want to just get 10,000 people together and get them hyped and excited," Courtney Hight, co-director of the Energy Action Coalition, an umbrella organization of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups including the SSC that puts on Power Shift, told the New York Times. "You want to get them hyped and excited and then send them off to take action."

Friday's kickoff event at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center featured speeches by former Vice President Al Gore and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. "There are four anti-climate lobbyists on Capitol Hill for every single member of the House and every single member of the Senate," Gore said. "What is the answer for this? It has to come from you. It has to come at a grassroots level."

Photo by Kim Teplitzky

Earlier that day, President Obama dropped in unexpectedly on a White House meeting his aides were holding with ten Energy Action Coalition representatives. Obama spent twenty-five minutes with the activists, telling them, "You have power, that's why I'm here."

Photo by Heather Moyer

Among the featured speakers on Saturday was author, climate activist, and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, who told the crowd, "We will never have as much money as the oil companies, so we need a different currency to work in, we need bodies, we need creativity, we need spirit. We understand the physics and chemistry of political power. In this case, it's not carbon dioxide that rules the day: it's money.

"Many of you are in the District of Columbia for the first time, and it looks clean and sparkling," McKibben said. "No. This city is as polluted as Beijing. But instead of coal smoke it's polluted by money. Money warps our political life, it obscures our vision, but just like with physics in chemistry there is no use whining. We know now what we need to do and the first thing we need to do is build a movement."

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